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Weekly Roster Update 9/14/18

September 14, 2018

Welcome to the weekly R.B.I Baseball Roster Update! September baseball is heating up! The NL West lead changes every day and the Oakland Athletics are on the heels of the Yankees for the first AL Wild Card spot. As is the case for every Friday throughout the 2018 season, we’ve given boosts to the week’s best performers.

While the Rookie-of-the-Year candidate has been fantastic all season, these past few weeks have been something really special. Ohtani set a new HR record for Japanese rookies at 19. He slashed .480 / .567 / 1.040 (with 3 stolen bases to boot), and his 2.8 WAR leads all rookies. This past week brings Ohtani’s slash line on the year up to an impressive .295 / .376 / .593 and he shows no signs of stopping. We’ve boosted Ohtani’s Contact, Power, and Speed ratings.

Wrist injuries can be a really scary thing for hitters so when Turner broke his wrist in spring training there were some concerns. Those have now been forgotten. Turner is currently hitting .311 on the year while posting the highest walk-rate of his career. He’s also sporting a career high 44% hard-contact rate and hitting .311 against four-seamers, .349 against sliders and .375 against curveballs. We’ve boosted Turner’s Power and Arm rating.

The Twins outfielder was a contact machine this past week. He slashed .381 / .480 / .524. While Kepler isn’t sporting the same batting average as he did in the 2017 campaign, he’s cut his GB rate down considerably while increasing his FB rate and increasing his hard-contact rate by 5 points. More importantly, Kepler has cut into his K rate, bringing it down almost 4% from last year while boosting his BB rate by 4%. We’ve boosted Kepler’s Arm and Fielding ratings.

Tanaka has an impressive arsenal of pitches but his slider is far and away his best weapon. Batters are currently hitting .174 off of the pitch, down from .196 last year. Batters are actually whiffing less and making more contact with the slider than last year, but they’re still doing nothing with it. Tanaka’s infield fly ball rate on the pitch has jumped from 23.4% to 29.5% meaning that almost a third of the time batters manage to make contact with the pitch, it’s not leaving the infield. Tanaka’s slider is currently sporting a 16.7 pVAL (definition here) which is good enough for 7th best in the league. We’ve boosted Tanaka’s Curve rating.

After a rocky first start back from the DL, Strasburg is starting to look like his old self. In his last four starts, Strasburg has a 2.55 ERA with a 2.71 FIP (an ERA indicator that removes luck and defense from the equation with hopes of painting a more accurate picture of a pitchers success; to be read similarly to ERA). The righty is also sporting a 9.85 K/9 in those four starts thanks to his fastball and curveball, the latter of which has a .182 batting average against. On the year, Strasburg has both a higher K/9 and lower BB/9 than his 2017 campaign. We’ve boosted Strasburg’s Curve and Drop ratings.

Derek Holland is arguably having the season of his career in 2018. His 3.46 ERA is extremely close to his career low, his 9.02 K/9 is the highest of his career and the 17.8% soft contact he’s inducing is his lowest since 2014. So what has changed for the Giants southpaw? Mostly his curveball and his sinker. The former is eliciting more whiffs than ever before while the latter is inducing nothing but ground balls. These successes have boosted Holland’s entire arsenal: batters are hitting less than .260 on each of his pitches. We’ve boosted Holland’s Curve and Drop ratings.